4

THIS WEEK: The War Fronts, The t

The War

Orel Can Mean Quick Victory

Orel and Belgorod have fallen under the hammering of the
Red Army. The great summer offensive of the Soviet forces
opened on July 14 and directed at the powerfully-fortified Nazi

bastion on the central front, is at the
end of its first objective. The Webhr-
macht is in retreat, falling back
through the narrow escape corridor

toward Bryansk under Red Army
artillery fire. The decisive rout
of the German army has opend the
way for the second phase of the
giant struggle — a possible drive
through the Sea of Azov that
would trap giant German forces
in the south. Then the way to the
west would be open — the final
drive against all Nazi forces on
oviet soil would be under way.
Only one prerequisite remains —
and its working out lies in the
hands of the Allies, not the Red
Army. That prerequisite is the
opening of the second front in
Western Europe immediately.
No other move, or combination
of moves can fill the needs, the

great opportunities, of this moment.
For the first time since 1941, the
Red Army has “liquidated” the
Nazi offensive and has iaunched
one of its own that already has
the German high command whin-
ing their excuses. In Sicily, final
triumph of the Allied armies can
only be a matter of days. Italian
fascism is bankrupt, the Balkans
are seething with opposition to
the Hitlerite occupation forces, the
underground movements of France
and the Lowlands are ready to
move at the first signal of an in-
vasion. To ignore the potentially
tremendous developments certain
to follow an cffensive in Western
Europe by continuing to stress the
air war factor, important as it un-
doubtedly is, will be to guarantee
against the defeat of Hitler within
the next few months, perhaps ex-
tend the war for years.

“Were is another voluntary enthusiast for German
labor, Herr Laval .. .”

What Will Follow Sicily?

What will be the situation facing the Allies when the Sicilian

campaign is ended?

The Canadian, British and American

armies, virtually intact after the sprint northward, will be only

two miles from the continent of
Europe, with Italian cities subject-
ed to heavy bombing raids, and
thousands of ships at their dis-
posal.

Across the Straits of Messina,
guarded and blockaded by the
British fleet, will be the outer peri-
meter of Hitler’s European fortress.
Inside the fortress, bounded by the
Atlantic, the Northern Seas, the
Eastern Front and the chain of
mountains from the Pyrenees to
the eastern slopes of the Balkans,
will be some 300 German divisions.
More than 200 will be on the East-
ern Front, with most of their armor
and much more than half of the
Luftwaffe, while over a remaining
territory twice as large as the oc-
cupied regions of the USSR, less
than 100 distinctly second-rate di-
visions will be spread thinly.

Our strategy, as Max Werner ad-
mirably puts it, should be:

@® The main attack to be deliv-
ered from the British Isles across
the Channel.

@ Flanking operations against
Seandinayia and the “soft under-
belly” of Europe across the Medi-
terranean or the Straits of Mes-
sina.

@ Diversionary stabs in as many
directions as possible.

The situation is simple: the great-
est weapon of destruction against
the Wehrmacht, the main enemy, is
the Red Army. We want the Red
Army to be a battle-axe, not only
a shield. To make it that we must,
before the summer is out, take off
some of the weight which burdens
it. é

This can only be achieved by a
direct attack against the Wehr-

macht in the West. Diversionary
attacks against Norway and Italy
are also necessary, though they can
only be attacks calculated to draw
Hitler’s forces in as many direc-
tions as possible. The big danger
in the present Italian situation lies
in the fact that the attention, given
to it by Allied leaders tends to
over-emphasize its importance, and
obscures somewhat the basic ques-
tion, which is this: that so far, aside
from the air attacks on Germany,
no part of the German army is
being engaged by Allied forces. Un-
til this situation is changed, there
is no likelihood of a decisive
change in the present relationship
of military power.

The ‘Island To Island’ Policy

In the Pacific war, events of the last few weeks have proved
again the apparent futility of conducting an island to island
advance against Japanese positions. American troops have been

besieging the important Japanese
base of Munda for the past six
weeks. The daily advance against
this stronghold has sometimes been
measured in yards. The Japanese
Barrison, occasionally reinforced
by air and sea, is resisting stub-
bornly, and though there is little
doubt of final conguest of the
posiiton, progress has been so slow
that serious questions have again
been raised as to whether the pol-
icy of forcing the Japanese slowly
back along the whole line of their
Pacific garrisons may not be fatal
in any perspective of a -swift
knockout blow which would be pos-
sible were it delivered from, say,
the mainland of China, with di-
versionary attacks from the Aleu-
tians and Burma.

This whole policy seems, how-

ever, to have strong support in
high quarters in the U.S. Navy. It
is the policy of the  defeatist
Pacific Firsters, voiced by such
people as WVice-Admiral Horne,
who recently maintained that the
United States must prepare for
War against Japan until 1949.

Such an outlook ignores, of
course, the whole strategy of co-
alition warfare as supported by
Roosevelt and Churchill, which
envisages an all-out attack on Hit-
ler Germany as the center of
the Axis. Such an attack, carried
out with all the resources at the
command of the United Nations,
could well smash the Nazis in 1943,
and leave the way clear for a
turn against Japan that would
crush the might of the inland
empire in relatively brief time.

United States -

Wallace’s Detroit Speeeh

Though the occasion is over a week old, the American people
this week were still discussing Vice President Henry A. Wal-
lace’s speech in Detroit in which he met the challenge of the

deteatist and negotiated peace
crowd scheming to take over the
Democratic Party by plainly show-
ing that he is ready and willing
to give leadership to the millions
of Americans who are determined
to achieve victory in the war and
in the peace.

To those who had hoped to drive
a wedge between President Roose-
velt and the vice-president on the
issue of Wallace’s dismissal as
head of the Board of Economic
Warfare, his tribute to FDR must
haye come as a sharp disappoint-
ment. And he went on to put his
finger on the enemy within by
declaring there were “powerful
groups who hope to take adyant-
age of the president’s concentra-
tion on the war effort to destroy
everything he has accomplished on
the domestic front over the last
ten years.”

Speaking in the center of the re-
cent racial outbreaks and before
an audience composed largely of
war workers, Wallace minced no
words in condemning as abettors
of fascism “these who fan the fires
of racial prejudice,’ and those who
seek destruction of trade unions:
And to the enemies of labor he
delcared that “97 percent of labor
has cooperated 100 percent with

our government in the war effort.”

Complementing the four duties
of the war which he cited in his
famous “Century of the Common
Man” speech last year, the US
Vice-President outlined three
peacetime responsibilities:

“The responsibility for enlight-
enment of the people, the respon-
sibility for mobilizing peacetime®
production for full employment,
the responsibility for planning
world cooperation.”

He expressed his conviction that
management, labor and the govern-
ment must continue to work to-
gether in the peace to assure full
employment and prevent a return
to “a capitalism of scarcity such
as that which produced both 1929
and 1932.” Finally, he linked this
with the question of international
cooperation, with the question of
continuing the teamwork with the
British and of becoming “better
acquainted with our new friends,
the Russians.”

What Wallace had to say at De-
troit was charged with a new mili-
tancy that bespoke his willingness
to lead in the dust and heat of
the day-to-day battle. Many see the
words of his speech as a weapon
in the war and signpost for the
peace.

Latin America

United Labor In Chile

Among the week’s most significant developments is the pros-
pect of a unified party of the Chilean working class, one of the
direct consequences of the Communist International’s dissolution

Jast May.

The proposal for a unified party
of the Chilean workers was ac-
cepted in principle last week after
meetings among the central com-
mittees of the Chilean Commun-
ists, the Chilean Socialists and a
smaller party kpown as the So-
cjalist Workers Party.

The unified party will probably
take actual form after the con-
gress of the Socialist Party in
August, and the congress of the
main Chilean Confederation of
Labor, later in the same month.

Alreedy cooperative action by
the parliamentary representatives
of the Communists and Socialists
has begun, and Socialists are re-
ported from Santiago working on
the Communist daily paper El
Siglo.

It is also, reported that the
President of the Republic, Juan
Antonio Rios, is expected to re-
organize his cabinet when the unt-
fied workers’ party is formed.

It comes as a direct conse-
quence of the dissolution of the
Comintern, and has its parallel
in the movement for the unifi-
cation of the Swiss working class
where the Socialist Party is
making overtures to the Com-
munists, and the Socialist Feder-
ation, a left-wing group.

Unity of the Chilean workers
is further seen as a boon to the

progressive and labor movements
in the American hemisphere,
strengthening Chile and all Latin
America in the fight against the
Axis.

~ Worl
CTAL Joins

Twenty thousan §
Labor Palace last 3
council of the Coy)
nounced its pledge ¢
arity with the Italia:
their efforts to overt -
and bring peace to.
hailed the rising str
Italian people for G
heralding the desruc
cism. E

It was an import
Stressing the need foj
al labor cooperation ii
ing the destruction
throughout the world
tive council called f
ence of world labor.
affiliate to the Anglo
union committee. In
4,090,000 CTAL work
teen countries, it d
‘thousands of Latié
workers stand ready
the battlefronts.” ff i
investigation of the pi}
independence for Puej

CTAL President Y
bardo Toledano annc
for creation of nation %
propagate the princip!
lantic Charter,

“whit Wy

i

ri

:

¥

peace and justice for #

: }
Citrine For
The main ques!
Congress are “how

-second front in Hur:

trade union committe:
ed so as to inciude the
ments of all the coun
the Axis,” Sir Walter

general secretary, stat ’
turn to England this

An English sailor
Wazi sub crewman

in 19 months.

blasted to the pott«
sinking more and

announcement say«